Council Gets The Buzz On Mosquitoes

EAST HARTFORD — Virginia Czapla runs from her car to her house to try to dodge the hovering masses of mosquitoes.

The ones at Dominick Lombari's house keep his grandchildren inside.

Thomas J. McCluskey wouldn't even open his door to shake hands with a salesman Tuesday, fearing the stinging menaces would barge in. It's bad enough he has to vacuum them off his garage ceiling, he said.

The three residents were in a group of about 40 who swarmed to a town council meeting Tuesday to demand that something be done about the mosquitoes in their neighborhoods, which are worse than in the past because of unusual weather. They presented a petition signed by more than 200 people.

The town has been dropping larvacide into catch basins and other public areas as it has in the past. But because of the high number of complaints, Mayor Timothy D. Larson has hired a company called Integrated Mosquito Control to assess how to attack the mosquitoes, which residents and experts from the company say form ``swarms'' and ``clouds.''

While they're not the same types of mosquitoes that have been associated with the West Nile virus, they are ``just a pain in the ... you know what,'' Larson told the residents. The town council altered its agenda to allow him to explain what action he is taking and to hear comments from the audience.

Many in the group were from the neighborhood next to Keeney Cove on the Glastonbury line. Officials also have fielded many complaints from neighborhoods in the northwest corner of town. Both areas are next to large bodies of standing water -- prime breeding grounds for mosquitoes -- that come from the Connecticut River.

The stage was set for the infestations earlier this spring, when massive amounts of snow melted and temperatures soared. That got the reproduction process started earlier, the experts hired by the town said in a telephone interview Tuesday afternoon.

The large amounts of rain that followed the dry spell further contributed to the mosquito brew. Fluctuating water levels encourage breeding, said the experts, Kurt Ehrhart and David Roach.

Roach and Ehrhart started surveying the town this week. In the Keeney Cove area, Roach said, 500 mosquitoes landed per minute. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta says five mosquito landings in 15 minutes are at the ``nuisance threshold,'' he said.

They don't have to tell that to the residents of the Keeney Cove area.

Resident Joe Magnano of Jerry Road drew vigorous applause and hoots when he demanded that the town move faster to solve the problem and not to wait for the results of a study.